Back on Sunday, Joey Matschulat over at Baseball Time in Arlington posted this..
Don’t think a tornado could ever hit Rangers Ballpark in Arlington while a game was in progress? Think again. The National Weather Service has confirmed that an EF2 tornado swept through downtown Atlanta on Friday night, sideswiping the 71,000-seat Georgia Dome during an SEC tournament basketball game between Mississippi State and Alabama and tearing multiple holes in the dome’s roof with 2:11 left in overtime.
One can only shudder to think what kind of havoc such a traumatic weather event might create at an outdoor sporting event.
Well, that’s been done already fictionally. Some time ago, the Discovery Channel ran a show called “Perfect Disaster: Supertornado”, and they had a digital representation of what would happen if an F5 tornado hit the Ballpark in Arlington. They use actual footage from the park, and refer to it as “Dallas Stadium”, but Rangers fans know what this is.
It’s fairly horrifying to watch, even though it’s completely fabricated. Not so much from gross things on the screen (they do not have people flying around in the tornado, but you know that would happen), but from the possibilities it rases in your mind. If things like that disturb you, you might not want to play this.
Joe…
I remember the night of the Lancaster/Hutchins tornado very well (1994), as we were at the Ballpark, just waiting for the torrential weather to die down so we could head home after the game was called. There were infrequent messages that came over the loudspeakers to the effect of “You’re safe where you are, just sit tight for a while.” When we did get a break in the weather, we got on the road, and very nearly drove INTO the storm that was headed for Lancaster.
Anyways, we returned to the Ballpark the next night for a game, and while they eventually got the game played, they did briefly have to take us out of our seats in the upper deck, exhorting us to quickly but carefully get down to the lower level. The winds were extremely high, and I’ve since been told (“haven’t been able to confirm”) that the thought was that we were about to take a hit. So, yeah, it certainly COULD happen, and a lot closer to us than Atlanta.